Review of Nine Marks of a Healthy Church

For those who might be interested, I recently wrote a review of Nine Marks of a Healthy Church that is available in The Witness, an online magazine of Grace Theological Seminary. It can be found at this link (you’ll need to scroll down the page a bit to find it):http://www.customzines.com/grace/

6 thoughts on “Review of Nine Marks of a Healthy Church”

It is my opinion that you should have included evangelism as being one of the most neglected. What form of evangelism is being used, one that promotes false converts or one that truely shows people their sinful nature and that they have sinned against God and are in need of repentance? I am dismayed that many GBC’s are falling into the promotion of a “feel-good” gospel and are not following the scriptures to warrant true conversion. I do agree that church discipline has been neglected. Again, we are so caught up in making people feel better, the scriptures are just a side bar. And satan is rejoicing.

I agree with you that biblical evangelism is indeed neglected, and I did not intend to communicate otherwise in my review (I only had 500 words to work with!). Your point is well-taken.

I have not been around the GBC to either agree or disagree with your evaluation of the state of evangelism in the Fellowship. But I will say that as I survey what is taking place in evangelicalism generally, your concern over the state of evangelism is accurate, and this concerns me as well. Dever addresses many of these concerns in the two chapters on conversion and evangelism in 9 Marks.

I’m not sure I have a good answer for that. But I do know that Dever values Systematics. If you are interested, they have posted suggested reading lists for both pastors and laypeople that includes several suggestions on systematic theologies. The list can be found at:

Sorry, the link in the previous comment did not come through cleanly and I’m not sure how to fix it. If you go to http://www.9marks.org and click on the button in the mainbar that says “Reading List” you will find the lists.